End of Service for the Weather Underground API

We’re contacting you today to tell you about some upcoming changes to the Weather Underground (WU) API and what these changes mean for you.

The WU API has been around since 2010 to help you develop apps and websites as well as manage your Personal Weather Station data. During that time, we’ve watched you build amazing products and visualize weather data with creativity and purpose.

Over the years, our infrastructure has struggled to keep up with the growing numbers of users coming to us for API data. We realized we needed to make changes to ensure the highest level of quality, performance and uptime for our API users.

As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Weather Underground API. The Weather Company, which acquired WU back in 2012, offers a powerful suite of enterprise-grade APIs that might be better suited to meet your scale and performance needs while offering a broader range of weather data. You can see these products here.

Here’s what you need to know going forward:

Your subscriptions, and therefore access, will continue to work through 12/31/2018.

If you are a paying WU API customer, you will receive a call from a representative from The Weather Company, and IBM business, to discuss transition options to other API services. If you’d like to have these conversations sooner, contact us.

If you are a Personal Weather Station owner, you will receive more information about our plan to offer free access to the data you provide to Weather Underground. We’ll reach out once that plan has been finalized.

The WU Forum will continue to be the best place to connect, keep you informed, share your feedback and get your questions answered as we go through this process.

We are grateful for your commitment to Weather Underground and appreciate your understanding and support as we work through this process. These changes will allow us to continually improve our services and develop new features to keep WU a thriving place for you for many years to come.

"If you are a Personal Weather Station owner, you will receive more information about our plan to offer free access to the data you provide to Weather Underground. We’ll reach out once that plan has been finalized."

Personally I am not worried about getting history of my data I send to you. it is written to SQL on my site as well.

I think most PWS users that run a site would like to know if you could confirm there will be a forecast offered via API to PWS Owners or not?﻿

WU is no longer a site for weather enthusiasts and amateurs. It's now a purely commercial for-profit advertising platform. The community they used to serve has been kicked to the curb by IBM and it's pure profit motives. Shame on the old WU for selling out. I've already shut my station down. It's pointless to continue here. I don't make you money, so I'm not important anymore.

I just joined! It looks like I am moving to Windy Weather or Accuweather or any weather station that appreciates the money I spent and the free data that I am providing to you! Thanks for nothing Darl!

WU doesn't want anyone to know what the cost or what the API will look like until it's so late a lot of users will have to stay. Any decent company would have informed their user base long ago about the changes so they could make the necessary study of how it affects them. They have ignored for over a year any request or bugs. They kept this a tight secret until now. You only have about 2 1/2 months from now until the current API is discontinues. That's a horrible way to run a company and I bet it doesn't change much once it is switched over. Start now to find another source to upload your data and get information about other API's. If you think WU is the best place to be, you are incorrect. There are much better companies out there.Anyone who wants to know a better place let me know. I can give you one.

Have you looked into submitting your data to PWS Weather (pwsweather.com) which then feeds Aeris? There is a free Developer tier account with Aeris which gives you 2 months of usage.

From what I gathered, Aeris is on the verge of creating a new free subscription for those who provide data to PWS Weather as long as that data is good. In the meantime, you can reach out to Aeris and ask to make that Developer tier permanent for the time being.

I will also add that the Aeris API provides more data than the Weather Underground API. Once you log in, you'll also notice how much more polished their account portal is. Still waiting to see how stable and fast the platform is, but it's looking good. I can only think that the more people that sign up that the better data subscribers will be receiving.

I agree. I had to switch to Aeris because of extremely poor or non existent support from WU. I didn't want to at first, I had used WU for many years and had a lot of time devoted to developing apps and a weather site. But for my web site to function proper I had to switch. Too may issues that were ignored by WU over the years. I will say I've only had a couple of issues at Aeris, (some were my fault) but their support is the absolute best. One day turnaround on any issue I had, and with follow up emails to make sure everything was working properly. I was so used to being ignored at WU it was like Christmas to me.

Can't believe they haven't give everyone here a link to look at the API you will required to use. Just a bunch of double talk and "Don't Give Up Crap".

Yeah, this is a ridiculously short amount of time for developers to switch. Developers should have several months to actually work with the new API before the old one is cut off (especially since new API's will probably be buggy - developers working with it early can help find those). And we don't even have API documentation yet to know if the data we actually want to get to is included or not. Before they said that access to an individual station's data was not going to be part of the new API, but now the info page for the Core plan kind of sounds like it will after all, but it's not clearly stated for sure. Maybe it's just talking about a location rather than an individual station. Weather buffs want THEIR station's data presented to them, not just for the general location.

If you are a Personal Weather Station owner, you will receive more information about our plan to offer free access to the data you provide to Weather Underground. We’ll reach out once that plan has been finalized.

So does that mean we continue sending you our data at the current rate/interval but will be restricted in our own retrieval rate? 100 calls a day is not going to cut it and if your company thinks we will pay (an undisclosed amount) Then it's time to move on again. I sense the continued way these responses are answered is intened to leave us in the dark as long as possible.

I am the author of the popular WU-forecast.php script which allows personal weather website owners to display the WU forecast for their area using the WU API key. The script is in use on several hundred websites around the world. With the upcoming discontinue of the WU API, these sites (most of them WU data contributors) will not have a forecast to display.

Will there be a free API key for the Weather.com API for low-volume use offered so I can rewrite the script for the new API? If not, I will likely have to discontinue the WU-forecast.php script (making several hundred current users quite peeved, in addition to my strong disappointment that WU continues to shed functions that have long been supported by your data contributors).

I have several PWS deployed in Guatemala, and had advocated in Latin America about WU platform for years as a way to make weather data available to more users specially in Latin America where met services lack this kind of information.

I convinced a lot of people in the region to deploy PWS's because I noted that the forecast got better after some days of data being sent, I think that the PWS network that all wx enthusiasts like us helped to built is one of the big assets that made WU appealing to TWC and then to IBM.

I understand business decisions, but as many has mentioned before, as a PWS network user and WU site user I feel all this was abandoned since these Corporate changes. The crowdsourcing model made you and all users had access to realtime data in remote location like yours and like ours in Latin America.

I just want a fair treat with a forecast API for users that has contributed to this platform (many of us for years when WU was a great startup). Just imagine how many hours in development has been invested like what saratogaWX has mentioned that must start again from 0 or loose what accomplished.

BTW, I came here via a Google search, did not received an email, all of you fellow PWS owners receive something ?

As Tim Roche notes above, personal weather station (PWS) owners will not be impacted. They will have access through the keys they already have to their own data, and probably a limited range of short-term forecasts.

We're trying to get to the point of rolling out information about this publicly, it's just not quite ready yet. More to come!

Yea I use the API in my relay program to CWOP to pull airport and GPS data from WU on install. I was sent no info on this and found it by accident. I dont use forcast users requested a API and entered it in the program to pull there station status. Everything will have to be rewritten with out notice.

Also anyone know why we are nolonger allowed to delete bad data from out station page....

I do have a wepage that pulls data but rather then rewrite the code I might as well create a script to post data to my website direct. If openweather didnt have a broken unusable API I would use it.

We have done everything we can to reach API keyholders. I'm sorry we were unable to reach you.

The API will continue to function past the end of the year for PWS owner/uploaders until the new API for PWS owner/uploaders is ready. If you want a peak at the documentation for the new API, you can look here.

Indeed... Change for better or worse? Kind of like the NEXRAD page on WU. Doppler Radar Detected Storms list has not worked for over a year and a half and states, "There are no Doppler radar detected storms for (anywhere) at this time." Perhaps a dangerous statement, as anyone seeing this may not realize they are in the path of impending, potentially disastrous weather. Customer service has not responded to this issue in a few months. I think broken may be well described.

We are a week into November folks. If I am going to rewrite scripts or change APIs I would like to know what I am up against so I can keep my sites running. It is past time to let us PWS owners know the specifics and start testing the replacement if there is one.

My googling led me here....I'm just a stupid mechanical engineer, stumbling around, trying to find an answer to the question....Does WU still supply weather data to IFTTT?, because none of the applets that use WU, as the service, are working?...Thank you for your help.

Now that there's only a couple of weeks left before deprecation, you have clearly not given us enough time to migrate to your supposedly-coming new API. I've begun moving all of my Wunderground API queries to the new NWS GeoJSON API. If you're in the United States, it's worth a look.

We're going to have to leave the WordPress discussion aside for the moment, it's being discussed over my head. I'll let you know when there's an answer.

In terms of developers, large and small, it's pay as you go, or shift to another platform. I know a lot of people are going to be unhappy with that answer, but there it is. There will no longer be a WU "developer key".

If you're building out apps for the future, you will probably want to consider the price point of your users. If they're likely to have the volume and desire the high quality data of The Weather Company, then build around that. If they are likely to want free access only, you're going to need to look for another platform.

I think the short answer is, yes, you're going to have to rewrite your app. The Weather Underground API ecosystem as it has been known will be ending for all but PWS owners who upload their data to WU and subscription customers who have contracts to transition to TWC data. And even they will eventually be shifting.

Will your application continue to work? If the application is used by a PWS owner who already has a key, it will work for a while, until the transition to the new API is complete, at which point it will also stop working. The calls to the new API may be similar, but they will not be identical. And poor old legacy WU API will be able to head home to watch TV.

What a shitshow, i.e. a situation characterized by a growing number of unsatisfied users, a company that does no communicate openly, and a representative that is unable to commit to binding statements. Six months have gone by since the initial announcement to end the service, and still no information about the upcoming transition provided to the PWS owners. The resulting exasperation will not magically go away.

It actually WILL go away. Once all the disgruntled users that helped them with their data to get where they are are all pissed off to the point that they stop wondering if wunderground/weather.com/ibm will ever be usable again, stop submitting them their data and take away the base that made wunderground. Pretty easy - simply stop supporting the joke that they play here by stopping to send them your data. Let's see who needs whom...

I've been saying to stop giving them data for a long time.Doesn't seem to help, people still think they are the only game in town and WU/IBM is glad of that. People that stay with this sorry service will just get sorry service. It's been really bad for years. I have no expectation that it will get any better. Probably worse.

I'm sure this may be considered unpopular, but while it's a PITA to have to figure out new code and access or hope your favorite project is going to adapt, at least we were warned and we're being given a path to move to at no cost and access up until we do. And they are responding and doing so respectfully. Documents exist and guidelines. Tangible things instead of promises.

Now compare this with how Logitech handled closing off access to a local device API without warning, through a silent firmware update that mentioned nothing about it in the release notes! Then they double down by saying it affected a 'few users'. People are calling for a pitchfork raid. And only terse replies that they don't plan on reversing the decision. Period. No interaction.

In comparison, WU seems to have a much firmer grasp on their own API situation. Victoria deserves a little more respect as the point person who has to deal with this; a decision she may or may not have had any material input on. I think she's doing a yeoman's task and doing an admirable job given the circumstances.

I have seen no explanation if why its necessary to change the api other than bad programers. No reasion i can see why the old api cant keep working with quotos changed.... so why cant it? Only reason i can see it they want to kick off all existing accounts. If someone wants to explain why the api needs to he changed and why the new one cant be backward compatable i would like to see that.

As I answered elsewhere, the old WU API is being closed for reasons that were determined long ago. Backward compatible API are not trivial to build. Arguing about these sorts of details now will not change anything.

I'm sorry that this change is difficult, but the change is necessary. We appreciate that customers going through this transition with us are also struggling. Thank you for your continued efforts!

I have read this entire forum thread today and my personal end-of-year bottom line on the topic is that I hope this will be archived somewhere forever as a prime example of what becomes of once honorable community projects in the hands of a big corporation.

Extra Kudos to Victoria for her heroic PR, personally taking most of the blame for her employer month after month while IBM is apparently running this once-great community project exactly by the big-business books:Suck value out of the asset as fast as you can, smile to the public in front of you while on the backside you shit on those who built your property and can't stop you ruining it.In Victorias shoes, I would have quit long ago or got very sick from bad consciousness. I hope she earns at least a very substantial income for holding her head out.

I have moved all my customer's API business away from WU and switched them over to OWM.